Liar
by StormDragon666
Summary: A one-shot and something of an AU...in which it's Konoha against the world, and Sakura against Sasori. SasoSaku


You Airborne fans may remember my past few chapters have been inspired/fueled by the Transformers franchise. This little thing also was…somewhat. I was reading a mini-fanfic by one of my favorite authors. Her beginning sentence was something like "This is just a little drabble I felt like writing based on a mention of a plot device in an early chapter of so and so…" and that sentence inspired me to…feel like writing a random drabble, based on a little plot device I've had in my head for a long time.

It probably won't end up as a drabble. If you know me, you know my chapters are typically _long_ to the point that I have to split them into two chapters because one chapter that is 27 pages long just isn't practical. I'll try to keep this short, but you've probably heard that one before…

Oh, little note: a Kage in this one-shot, such as the Hokage, is not only the leader of the ninja village, but the entire country their village is in.

666

November 10th, around dawn, specific time unknown

666

War was inevitable. This was fact. It applied to the entirety of the human race as well as this strange land's five nations. But for now, it applied to this strange land's five nations.

The Land of Fire was honorable, and the Land of Sound was greedy. Fire trusted Sound and grieved their mistake when it was much too late. For Sound had secretly brought a tacit alliance up with Suna and Iwa, capitals of the Wind and Earth lands, and then all the other nations excluding Fire and its fantastic Konoha. All knew, that when Leaf's Hokage invited all the other country leaders to the annual autumn festival, Leaf had unknowingly hung itself.

There was Tsunade, in her finest robe—not a sake stain anywhere!—toasting the fine friendship and peace that the entire continent shared. Her fellow leaders, all the political powers on the continent, sat at the dinner table with her, surrounded by countless other tables filled with visiting tourists from all countries, and locals as well. Thousands of eyes watched Tsunade tap her champagne class and propose that lovely toast. Thousands more, who were not in the village "—an age of total, complete peace we haven't seen in four centuries at least!" she was saying with a genuinely pleased grin.

And a kunai came out of the grove of trees behind her, spearing into her brain stem. Tsunade's finest robe was painted with a thin red stripe.

A thousand more weapons showered upon the people from above. The shinobi from all villages but Leaf, who had all been informed of the agreement to take down the grand nation, rained wave after wave of shuriken, daggers and sharpened kunai down on the innocents and the festive feast they would never eat. The shinobi up there, who had been riding on summoned birds provided by the Mizukage himself, proceeded to fly down and take a few drumsticks and cocktails before returning to their business and setting the village on fire.

The Hokage had begun her toast on November 12th, around sunset. When November the thirteenth began, at midnight, the legendary Village of the Leaf had burned to the ground, and a great many lives with it. The shinobi of the village had been completely unprepared. Those that survived first attempted to get their bearings, to keep loved ones safe, and then gathered to plot a rebellion. A rebellion of the remains of a village against the shinobi of four entire nations.

Konoha had been known for its large number of shinobi. At least half of all residents were or had been shinobi at some point in their lives. The ratio was closer to a third in all the other capital villages, such as Suna and Kiri. This provided them with little help. Konoha's surviving ninja numbered around five hundred. The ninja facing them, ninja of four nations, numbered close to three and a half thousand.

At first the Kages laughed at the ragtag group proposing to fight. The Mizukage, the leader of the Land of Water, attempted to even meet and negotiate with the leader of the Konoha ninja. He proposed that if they gave in their lives would be spared and they would not be put to slavery like the commoners of the Land of Fire. The leader of Konoha's shinobi, an ANBU veteran called Kakashi Hatake, voiced the opinion of his group clearly.

_No. _he said. By the time he said this, the Mizukage lay dead in the grassy clearing where he'd proposed to meet Kakashi. One of Kakashi's favorite emblazoned daggers stuck out of the man's chest.

A man called Orochimaru had appointed himself leader of the newly-formed country, the Land of Sound. Orochimaru appointed a new Mizukage to replace the one Kakashi killed. Orochimaru met with his fellow Kages and their most trusted officers to discuss what should be done with this stubborn group.

"What have you called this meeting for?" said the Tsuchikage that day. "Not what we're to do about them, surely? You know they must be killed. How quickly to do it is what we should be talking about. A slow and steady number of losses will discourage both their will to rebel and the will of anyone else secretly thinking rebellious thoughts." This was decidedly the way things went.

Autumn passed and winter—not particularly cold, not cold enough to hold back the fighting—passed. The four nations toyed with the Konoha nin, mocking their poor tools and starvation and slow, shameful deaths. They came back repeatedly and nipped Konoha's heels just enough to make them stagger and _nearly _fall. Still the renegade group stood up. They fought to their dying breath, and some say beyond that.

By New Year's Day Konoha had four hundred and six remaining fighters, some of them being only volunteers and not shinobi at all. They fought into the spring, to March and April, to sakura viewing season, during which the four nations mocked the Konoha group by taking a break to enjoy the sakura flowers during their war.

The Konoha group was silently furious. They infiltrated Suna, Wind's capital and ninja city, and stuck knives in the necks of all shinobi they could find. One hundred and fifty-three Suna shinobi and even a few visiting Kiri ninja were killed. The Konoha shinobi retreated to their hideout miles and miles away without a bruise.

The nation leaders were outraged. The war broke out full-force now. But the Konoha shinobi had grown wise during the time they were were pestered with mock-attacks and insults. They had learned the weaknesses of the other shinobi while they had suffered, and used these new strengths to the best and beyond of their ability. The four nations were crippled during the summer. The ranks of Konoha, or rather, the ranks of the Land of Fire, swelled to four hundred—four hundred shinobi made up of some volunteers who had been trained since last autumn, and some shinobi who had come out of hiding to join the renegades.

Anger and insult was pierced into every attack and assault Konoha suffered. They felt their enemies' fury each time a foreign shinobi thought they'd come across the legendary renegade's hideout, and found only remains of recent fires and paper scraps where the rebellious ninja had made camp just days before.

Autumn came again, and with it the Kazekage's new fighting force. No Konoha shinobi knew what those shinobi were exactly. They attacked with such rage and speed and power that on their first assault Konoha's ninja escaped using a highly convenient forest fire and its ensuing, helpful smoke. Their numbers were cut then to two hundred and sixty-four—made up of only shinobi who had originally been from Konoha. No volunteers or new recruits made it back.

Konoha's ninja alternated between licking their wounds, moving hideouts and striking influential villages and figures all through autumn. Sometime in October their numbers drifted down to two hundred, and back up to two hundred and thirty. One of Kakashi's best strategists, a young man by the name of Shikamaru Nara, estimated that the other four nations were down to two thousand from the original three they had nearly a year ago.

All this, Sakura knew.

It was the same as she knew her hair was short and pink, and that she liked running and reading and competing in playful games with Naruto. The horror and pain it had brought had drained from her sometime during the summer, she thought. Maybe spring.

The thought of the kunai shower on the Konoha autumn festival—a festival for which she'd been present, watching Tsunade give her toast—now ceased to make her heart clench and writhe. It was a dull ache now and sometimes she wondered how and why this was, for Sakura was given to musing, curious thoughts, pointless or no.

Konoha's most recent base was a cavern carved into the side of a cliff near the border of the land of Waves. Sakura, age seventeen, enjoyed breaking off stalagmites from the cave and using them as swords to duel with her best friend, Naruto. Sometimes a few shinobi came up to them and put down bets as to who would fall down flat on their ass first. Whoever was the loser took to childishly irritating the winner the rest of the night, poking them and flicking pebbles at them and tripping them when they walked by. The winner typically never minded and both got consistent laughs out of their own behavior.

Sometimes they had made games out of their recon missions. Naruto would point to a shinobi keeping guard outside a village, and both the young adults would throw a shuriken. Whoever struck closest to the brain won, but striking the heart with a second weapon was worth bonus points. Shikamaru had been graciously keeping track for them since the war started last autumn. Naruto was now at six hundred thirty-nine and Sakura at six hundred forty-four. (Next time they got their hands on a particularly good piece of food, Sakura would get first dibs.)

All this, Sakura knew, and thought of many times.

She knew all this the same as she knew sometime on November the 3rd—or maybe the 4th?—she, Naruto and Tenten had been running through the woods, bringing back the body of a Kiri officer for interrogation to their base. He was a great, heavy brute, and because Naruto had been injured all around the torso while killing the man's fellows, Tenten and Sakura bore the huge man's weight between them.

Sakura insisted on taking the lion's share of it because a Kiri ninja had jabbed three pieces of glass into Tenten's arm and surely holding up this man couldn't do it any good. Tenten wouldn't have any of it, however. "You're still innocent. Young. Let me." Tenten, who was of age twenty-two, had said. Sakura shook her head at this phrase that she'd heard folk tell her many a time, and did what Tenten asked.

Naruto was complaining about the various glass shards and metal spikes stuck into his torso for the umpteenth time. Sakura joked with him all through the trip, both she and Naruto hiding their awareness that his wounds could be fatal if a medic didn't treat him in time. Sakura's medical skills were only above average and it was her speed and mammoth strength that set her apart from other shinobi. She didn't trust her novice medical skills to so much as poke one of Naruto's injuries. She was thinking this when she heard the whistle of metal through the air, and when she felt the blooming, furious hurt on her shoulder blade.

Tenten cried out suddenly and dropped to the ground. For a few moments, Sakura held the huge man all on her own and she felt she would have been able to carry him the last few miles to the Konoha nin's base, but a second and third kunai struck her in the thigh and the arm. Each were buried deep, the thrower having a frighteningly powerful arm, and Sakura could not hold the Kiri ninja any longer. She dropped him and fell onto one knee some thirty meters in front of Tenten, who was staggering towards her. Naruto was nowhere to be seen. Tenten got to Sakura and together the two girls grasped the Kiri nin again, moving forward with greater speed and the awareness that they were being hunted.

"_RRrrrraaaoowwr!" _came the call of a summoning animal. To the thoughtful Sakura, it sounded feline, tiger or lion, mayhap. It was accompanied by much yelling, the heavily accented yelling that could only be shinobi from the Land of Earth.

"Cover sweep!" Sakura hissed to her friend quietly, and she nodded her understanding. "Cover sweep" was one of many code words the Konoha ninja group used, meaning that should any Konoha shinobi find themselves being followed, they must lead their followers away from Konoha's base at all costs. In Tenten and Sakura's case it meant they would have to carry the heavy Kiri man with them, through miles and miles of pointless paths, and without Naruto.

However, the cover-sweep operation could not be started. Sakura saw three ninja appearing through the trees out of the corner of her eye. Her first instinct was to toss the great Kiri man at them, but he and his information could be of fantastic value so she had to suffice with grasping the enemy's kunai out of her own leg and tossing it. The first of the enemy trio was struck in the neck and fell. His comrades jumped over him.

Someone's arm wrapped around Sakura's neck and Tenten screamed out of her sightline. She bent and launched a roundhouse kick at her offender's midsection. They groaned and let her free at the same time she felt a set of teeth stick into her calf. Sakura tried not to scream at the pain it brought. She stuck to shedding agonized tears instead and attempted to kick the offending summoned lion away. Blood bloomed on its skull as she thrashed it. Tenten had disappeared.

Another set of teeth pierced into her, just under her neck this time and the pain was so great that the young Sakura Haruno could not stay conscious. She had just enough time to do two things: be furious at herself for not being able to escape, and to hear her assaulters speak one phrase:

"—physical prowess enough to snap your neck in one hand. Take her to Suna's holding designation."

All this, Sakura knew.

All this Sakura hated.

She had woken up in what she presumed to be "Suna's holding designation," which was quite obviously a holding cell for prisoners of war. So far as she could see by looking through the bars of her cell, she was either alone in the building or had no fellow POWs that were close enough to her cell to be heard or seen.

'_Naruto wouldn't have left the Kiri shinobi if he could help it…' _she thought. _'There's a fine chance that he went back to retrieve him and he's being interrogated at our base right now. Keep thinking it, Sakura, keep thinking it…come on…' _This was her attempt to cheer herself and distract herself from the fact that _she _would soon be interrogated.

She was, after all, a leader of her own squadron in Konoha's "army" and knew the leader of its entirety, Kakashi Hatake, on a personal level, having been his student as a genin, along with Naruto. She was possibly one of the most valuable hostages her enemies could have gotten. They would try every means known and unknown to man to get her to speak.

They would TRY. Sakura, of course, was determined not to speak, even if it killed her. This was exactly what she'd been trained to do all her life. Specifically in the last year or so.

She figured she had spent some five or six hours alone playing silly mental tic-tac-toe and I-spy games with herself before she heard a door opening far down the hallway. Seeing as she was sitting down with her hands chained together in front of her and her ankles shackled to the floor, she couldn't sit up and stand by the bars to try and see who it was. The chains sucked her chakra away every thirty seconds in an unpleasant creepy-crawly sensation. She had already tried to break free many times in the past few hours but found that he hadn't a chance without chakra. Hopefully these people would walk past her cell so she wouldn't have to pull on her chains to see them.

There was no need in the end, for the person came to her cell on their own. At first she was able to see the person's shadow and a second one. She could make out a lean body build, but the light was fuzzy in this place and she couldn't be sure. The windows, though new and metallic and pristine like everything else she could see, allowed little light. The second shadow could only just be called a giant blob.

They stopped at her cell and inwardly Sakura said something like, _'No, no, no, fuck no!' _for the two standing outside her cell where two of the most well-known shinobi on the continent. One native of Suna, one of Kiri.

The first one was the "lean shadow" she had seen moments ago. Akasuna no Sasori was what this cloaked man before her was called. Some called him a master of puppetry and others a master of cheating—for it wasn't really fair to set a ten-armed, weapon-packed puppet against a two-armed regular shinobi—and were the continent not in a state of war and had he not been among the most skilled assassins ever known, many a female would find themselves staring at his flawless and youthful face, despite the rumor that he was beyond thirty years old.

Why Sakura found the larger, more muscular one less threatening she did not know. He was Kisame Hoshigaki, of Kiri, who had joined a cult, killed all its members and left a wanted man. He was several inches taller than Sasori, probably weighed thirty or forty pounds more and covered head to toe in _blue skin. _He even had little nicks on his cheeks that looked very much like a fish's gills and this reminded the musing Sakura of many foolish jokes she'd heard in her days and nearly laughed. His overall air of rage dispelled that idea, though. The frown he wore looked bad enough to crack his face open and she wouldn't have been surprised if the blue man punched a hole through her cell bars and came over and beat her to death.

"This is _it?" _the blue man queried. His voice wasn't as frightening as Sakura thought it would be, and despite his insulting comment she felt somewhat relieved. "This is the bottle of mammoth-strength everyone's talking about? This is a little kid. Look at her, Sasori, she's probably not even out of puberty yet!"

'_And you sound like you're on your period,' _she sniped back in her mind. She knew better than to challenge this behemoth outright, but a few mean thoughts about him wouldn't hurt anyone.

"Well, if you'd like to unchain her and see if she doesn't throw you into the nearest mountain, go on ahead."

Sakura would not have responded to this, for she was too busy wondering how someone with a voice that _cool _could be the killer of thousands. Kisame's voice was much more fitting to the slaughtering genre. She didn't have the chance to respond anyway, because the blue man said, "Well, do you recognize me or not, Pink-face?"

'_Pink-face. He can't even come up with an insulting name.' _

"This might help," he said before Sakura could say anything. From the pocket of his black-and-red emblazoned cloak, he pulled out a pair of gloves and a mask, both small and probably skin-tight, colored a tannish-peach sort of color quite like…human skin. And the face on the mask looked very much like—

"You're the Kiri ninja my friends and I were going to bring home." she said aloud. Sasori smiled at her, as did the blue man. Sakura liked the blue man's smile more.

"No shit." He stuffed the mask and gloves back into his pocket and one of his blue hands grasped a bar on her cell. "And good thing Sasori and Deidara and their guys found you when you did. If you'd taken me back to your base, I would have killed every last one of you little Konoha fucks I could see!"

"You?" Sakura laughed. "Just you?" Now that the opportunity was open, she would gladly insult Kisame. Especially since her chances of living past the next week looked pathetically slim. "Nemo versus three hundred Konoha shinobi?" _'They don't need to know we're closer to two hundred than three. May as well give out as much false information as possible.'_

Nemo was not amused. He crunched the cell bar in his hand and ripped it away, leaving a gap just large enough for him to stick his blue-haired head in. "I'm still glad you were the one we got, though, Pink-face." He showed his dreadful fangs in a grin. "Nobody gives a shit about the brunette with a million kunai in her belt or the blonde stupid guy. The little pink girl is the one everybody wants to take a crack at."

'_He's saying that when they leave me alone their friends will come in and beat me, most likely because they're bored.' _Kakashi had told Sakura the "bad dude code" years ago, and when muscular, suitable-to-be-evil-henchmen fellows said certain things, she knew what they really meant. She pretended not to know, of course.

"Take a crack at me? Why would they take a crack at mammoth-strength Pink-face when they have you?" she asked genuinely. "If I can toss someone into the nearest mountain, you can toss them over to the next continent." Sakura was half-believing this was true.

The blue man grinned again and Sasori, behind him, rolled his brown eyes and sighed. "Don'cha know? Half the shinobi you Konoha fucks call _evil _have seen what you can do, kid. I've seen you pick up my old friend's summoned crocodile and snap its neck on your knee like a hockey stick. And I know Sasori's seen you twice, but he saw more speed than power. Supposedly you can notice a projectile when it's three feet from your face and still be quick enough to dodge it."

"More than twice, Kisame." Sasori chimed in. His eyes locked on Sakura and she felt immediate hatred for him. "I've seen that exact phenomenon six or seven times. You're an incredible combination of agility and strength."

"It's nothing but sheer willpower." she explained truthfully, shrugging, hiding her nervousness that she'd been near this man six or seven times and never known. "I _want _to dodge a projectile and snap a crocodile's neck and if I _want _to severely enough, I will. You obviously _want _to come in here and punch me because me and my friends nearly took your hostage, but apparently you don't want it enough to make it happen." Kisame's toothy grin became a fanged frown.

"Sasori, sir, do you outrank him?" Sakura asked innocently, even adding girly, fluttery blinks to her question. "I think that if you didn't, he would have ripped the cell door open and broken all my bones, you know? If he's trying to hide the fact that he's pissed at me, he's not doing it well."

Kisame's fanged frown grew wider, angrier. "Well, what's the problem?" Sakura chuckled. "Since I think it's now clear Kisame's not allowed to assault me, is there any reason why?" _'They want to interrogate me.' _Sakura answered herself. _'Let's see if they're cheeky enough to say it aloud to me.' _

Sasori titled his head in a way that looked somewhat playful, perhaps flirtatious. _'Don't tell me that.' _Sakura groaned mentally. _'They've seen my strength close-up six or seven times, they know I'm dangerous and they think they can _seduce_ the secrets out of me? I thought Sasori was known for being crafty and intelligent.' _"We've waited about a week to see if your fellows would come for you. They should know the only place we keep hostages in the entire continent is this building in Suna. It seems they aren't going to. We're giving them a few days to grieve before we begin any interrogations on you. I know Kakashi Hatake will be quite sad. I remember a few years ago at Konoha's autumn festival, he said he considered you his daughter."

"I didn't know they allowed murderers at Konoha's autumn festival." she shot back. Sasori merely shrugged, leaving the question of how he heard such a thing from Kakashi, as well as whether he was actually at the festival or had a spy there, unanswered.

He also left questions regarding Sakura herself unanswered. Why had she slept an entire week? Why would they _let _her sleep an entire week? By now, the Konoha forces would have surely moved to a new base. She was still a useful hostage, but not nearly so much so as she would have been several days ago.

"Starting tomorrow evening, I will come here and attempt to get you to talk. My methods will vary by day until I find one you particularly dislike. That one, I shall force upon you until I find out what I need to know, and have the information given to the Kazekage, and in turn the other leaders."

Kisame grasped the cell bars again, as though trying to keep them away from Sasori. "What? You? Why do you get to be the one to—"

"Talk to Pein, not me. I didn't ask to be given the assignment. But I'm glad I got it." The last bit made Sakura's stomach turn uncomfortably, and she hid her nervousness by glaring at the redhead.

"You know I'll attempt to kill myself before I attempt to tell you anything, yes?" she asked with a raised brow. This made Kisame laugh. He glanced behind him at Sasori to gauge his comrade's reaction. His comrade's reaction was thus: "Of course. By your 'sheer willpower' you will try to commit suicide to protect your comrades. And that is honorable." Kisame was frowning at him. "But that's why your hands and feet are tied, isn't it? They hardly give you any space. I'm sorry if you find you have an itch on your head. You won't be able to get at it."

"I'll manage," Sakura said, and then lay down on her side, her backs insolently facing the two men. She heard Kisame growl as he understood the insult of the gesture. There was silence for several minutes and Sakura could picture the two men staring at her, contemplating either her craftiness or how much time and torture it would take to crack her.

At last, she heard footsteps. "I'll see you tomorrow, then, Sakura." _'And he knows my name…' _"Have a good night."

"Have a good night, murderer." she replied.

Kisame followed after Sasori, his footsteps going at eerily calm intervals.

Inwardly, Sakura sighed, and began one of her typical mental conversations with herself to pass the time. This time, she tallied the bad things she had done in her young life, wondering if the number was large enough to take her to hell when she died. She knew she'd find out soon enough.

666

November 15th, 4:45 PM

666

"Check."

"Again? How do you do it?" Sasori chuckled, moving his king piece.

Sakura, who sat cross-legged in her cell with Sasori, kept her eyes on the chessboard between them. "I thought you'd be clever enough to figure it out. Aren't you known for a sharp wit?"

"Even the smartest shall find themselves stumped sometimes."

"I've been stumping you at this for the past two days. And the three days before that, you were the one stumping _me, _asking my favorite color and hobbies and whatever else, and then shared your own personal information with me. You know I suspect you of lying about all of it, and that I lied to you half the time, don't you?"

Sasori watched Sakura moved her white bishop three spaces forward, just out of range of his black rook. "Of course. I doubt you really enjoy cloud watching and I'm uncertain about you counting millipedes as a favorite animal. But I don't think the bit about your liking to read books was a lie, though. You seem lost in thought much of the time, musing about anything that tickles your fancy. That's a characteristic I would put with one who enjoys books."

"And I would put you as one who likes classical music. That's the one thing you told me about yourself that I don't think is a lie."

"That is true. I enjoy all sorts of classical music. I find it calming and inspirational."

"That could be a lie."

"It isn't, Sakura."

"Mm-hmm."

"It isn't."

"Is that a joke?"

Thus went Sakura's first days of "torture" with Akasuna no Sasori. She had expected mind games at the very least, and his ugliest, most deadly puppet to be shoved in her face at worst. But all he had done, for about two hours every day, was talk.

"What is the one thing you would love to be doing right now?" was the first question he had asked on the first day. "Sitting in my apartment that was destroyed last year, watching a movie with my cat, Benvolio." she had said. The cat's name had come straight from _Romeo and Juliet, _and she wasn't surprised that sophisticated-looking Sasori had recognized it. They'd launched into a conversation of Shakespeare (Sasori _hated _A Midsummer Night's Dream and loved all his other works) until Sasori randomly looked out the window at the setting sun and said he had to leave.

The next day was a discussion of personal information. What do you like to eat, what's your most pleasant memory, what was your favorite subject in your Academy days? Sakura answered half of them truthfully and half not, leaving Sasori to guess which. She liked to eat broccoli, which was a truth, her most pleasant memory was building a ten-foot-tall snow fort with Naruto when they were twelve, which was a truth, and her favorite subject in her Academy days was medical science, which was untrue.

The third day began the first of three days of chess. Sasori had brought the board with him that day and suggested they play a game, as he thought the calculation the game required would be good exercise for their brains. Sakura had glared at the older man and effectively slaughtered him in the first game.

Now was the third day of chess. It seemed that they were evenly matched, winning and losing a relatively similar number of games, neither growing bored of it. Sakura had a growing suspicion that Sasori was torturing her through irritation, doing pointless activities till she broke down screaming and asking for _something to just fucking happen already _and she would give out all her information just to feel the adrenaline and not the boredom all through her body.

Sakura had read this reaction was actually common among hostages under that form of torture. Sakura couldn't believe that some people had actually given away all their secrets solely to cure boredom. Then again, Sakura could find entertainment watching paint dry—as a child, she'd actually painted her room several times just to watch it dry—and was confident she would die before doing such a thing.

She decided to test a theory. Try and get some of her own information out of the redheaded murderer.

"You know…" She moved her knight slowly forward in its distinctive L-arc. "I really do find it strange that you don't know how I win. My strategies aren't that different from yours when you win. Are you trying to make your lies that easy to see?" Sasori looked up at her from the chessboard, and Sakura thought his brown eyes appeared pensive. She held her knight an inch or so in the air as she prepared to get rid of his queen and put her own piece on that space. She was only three spaces from his king.

"I guess you would have to have some weird tactics to torture someone, but I become less and less valuable every day. My friends have probably switched bases three or four times now." In reality, they probably would have moved once, twice at most. "And even if I do give some grand information about Kakashi or his closest officers, that could change any day, too. Kakashi used to love reading those famous Icha Icha porn novels. But without Naruto and I there to try and take the books away from him and read them ourselves, he might not enjoy it as much."

Sasori was most definitely pensive now. Thoughtful of what could and could not be lies—he might be wondering if Sakura really knew that Naruto was or was not safe at the Konoha base. Aware that she was teasing him. Playfully, rudely, insolently.

"Also I really do like millipedes." Sakura tossed in that truth carelessly. "My pet, Benvolio, he's not a cat. He's a giant black millipede. Huge creepy-crawly. Somehow survives Konoha's destruction and I found him in my pocket just after I escaped. Back when I had my own apartment there, when I was home alone and I watched a movie, I took him out of his cage and he sat on my coffee table near the television. And he made this weird little squeaking sound whenever a character died. He's a very sensitive creature."

Sasori stared, and blinked once.

The young girl leaned forward, painfully aware she was acting cheekily towards someone who could most likely kill her if he liked and disgustedly aware that he was quite attractive. She was mere inches from his face. "Here's something that may or may not be a lie…something for witty and crafty Akasuna no Sasori to mull over."

She moved her knight in the air in circles around Sasori's queen, circling it like a vulture over a carcass. "Maybe there was a plan in the Konoha renegade group to assassinate Orochimaru. It's not like we don't know he's left-handed and likes to put three locks on every door in his house. And after him, the Kazekage would be next in line, since he's visiting Orochimaru this month, having a friendly golf tournament!"

"Oh, and maybe I know that you like hard rock, too. Not just classical." Sasori twitched as Sakura cheekily said this. "Maybe my friend Tenten and I already infiltrated Suna's records last April and found out that the most wanted murderers in the country were hired by the Kazekage to exterminate us…most wanted murderers including _you._" Sakura knew, just knew, that Sasori's foot was irritably tapping just a bit.

"Maybe I know everything about you. Maybe I know that when you were six years old, your parents went on a mission to the Land of Fire and never returned and your grandmother raised you and taught you puppetry. Maybe I know that your best friend is a blonde fellow called Deidara, from Iwa, and even though he gets on your nerves every damn day you still think he's a fun guy, loyal to very few people—one of which is you—and he's worth having as a friend."

'_Time to finish up…' _

"Y'know what else, Sasori? Maybe I know that you were born off of this continent before your parents moved here when you were just two, and that you speak French and Russian! Maybe I know that you like rain showers and seafood and that you're actually thirty-two years old!"

Sakura whacked her knight at Sasori's queen. The black piece was tossed off the board and clattered to the other side of the cell. Sakura kept her eyes on Sasori and allowed herself a small, modest smile.

For some twenty seconds, Sasori stared at her, unmoving, and Sakura became inwardly afraid even as she kept her small smile on her face. Another twenty or thirty seconds passed and she raised an eyebrow, wondering what was going through the murderer's mind and still being able to look confident and rude. Then—his hand was around her neck and the three or four inches between their faces became less than one.

Sasori's lips brushed hers when he spoke. "And did _you _know, Sakura, that you are trying my patience to its limit?" Sakura didn't dare speak and force her lips to move against his. Dreadfully afraid inside, she nodded and gave a little chuckle.

"Did _you _know I find you to be the most fascinating captive I've ever seen?" he continued, tapping one finger on the back of her neck. "And you know how old I am. You must know how many I've seen in my years. At first I had the idea that your speed and strength were worth studying before I handed you to Kisame to play around with. But now I find your cleverness and strange quirks very charming, and I wonder how one so young can turn my own games against me."

His hand moved away and Sakura felt the need to tremble as his finger scratched under her chin as though she were a pet. "But you are still innocent. You don't know everything. Ah, but you know _that, _do you? You know you are still young and have much to learn. Not many your age can accept this…and still have the heart to try their luck at playing mind games with a murderer."

'_I _must…_stand up for myself! Can't let him know I'm absolutely scared to _death!'

"So is _this _the actual mind game?" she asked. She was well aware that their lips were still touching when they talked, and tried her very best to put that out of mind. "You half-pretend to half-seduce me? This is pretty original; good job."

He smiled against her. "Well, thank you. I've never done it before. But now I can't resist. Hmm…"

'_He's debating whether or not to rape me, isn't he?! Don't do it, don't do it, man! There are way prettier girls than me out there! I'm fine with dying a virgin!' _

"Your monologue has actually made me late. The Kazekage wanted to meet Deidara and I today at this time."

"Sorry." the girl said with a fantastic amount of sarcasm. "I don't usually yak so much. I prefer reading books and playing with millipedes and having contests with my friend, Naruto. But you know that."

Sasori smiled again. "I do." Half-unexpectedly, he closed the distance between them in a kiss that made Sakura's heart skip several beats. It lasted some three or four seconds and when Sasori pulled away he stood up to leave, forgetting the chessboard completely. Sakura sat in the same pose, mouth closed, eyes innocently wide and looking quite dumbstruck.

He opened the cell door and was about to close it when he heard her make a sound something like, "Gbaaah!" Sasori turned back to her chuckling. He saw Sakura with her hands close to her mouth, as though wanting to wipe away all traces of him but afraid to touch. She turned her bright emerald eyes to him and pointed accusingly, as much as the shackles on her wrists would allow.

"You sick pervert, I'm under eighteen! That's child molestation!"

"You're disconcerted and upset, aren't you?"

"Yes!"

"Then it's served its purpose. Tomorrow the real mind games will begin." Sasori smiled as he shut the cell door and left. Sakura made only one more disgusted sound and he did not hear her again.

666

November 16th, 5:02 PM

666

It was actually a very entertaining dream. Sakura _knew _it was a dream and felt as though she were watching a movie, having earned the best seat in the house. Batman, Superman and Spiderman had teamed up to destroy Venom, who had somehow become powerful enough to be a challenge for even the kickass team of three. Venom had Batman in his clutches. The flaming rubble of a post office and the rising sun stood out behind them. Superman was flying over fast as he could, Spiderman shooting a stream of web to keep a huge piece of stone from crushing—

DEATH.

The ground shook around Sakura and her eyes shot open, with that one word blazing fearfully in her mind. Spiderman and all the others were gone. A huge black spike was jammed into the ground mere inches in front of her nose. It retracted and left a gaping hole in the cell wall. She sat up with her shackled fists raised in an attempt to defend herself, for some reason expecting Kisame to be there—

Of course not. It was Sasori again. She saw the difference in him immediately. The calculating serenity she'd seen in his face in the several days she'd known him was gone. He wore a little smirk now and something about his eyes, something she couldn't name, was undoubtedly frightening. The two giant beasts hovering in the air behind him only completed the image of a devil. The youngest, stupidest infant would know this creature was dangerous.

"You slept _very _late," he said. Even in that flat sentence, there was a small change in the tone she was used to. Sakura would have felt much better if his differences were outright and obvious, but this wasn't so. Surely he meant to frighten her, knowing she was keen enough to see these changes. Not just the two horrid puppets he'd brought with him today.

"Sit up, please." The puppets raised their hands as though gesturing for her to do it. She did so, slowly, letting him image exactly why she'd chose that pace. His hands fell to his sides and he flicked one finger. One of the puppets, looking something like a furless, long-legged werewolf, lashed out one ridiculously long finger. The shackles that held Sakura's wrists were cut.

"You should have just enough room to stand. Do so." And this Sakura did. She let her hands rest at her sides, as they had not been able to do for five days.

The puppets floated to the ground so that they were standing, and their controller waltzed up to Sakura. His distance bordered on entering her personal space. "Do you want to know something, Sakura?" the redhead asked, putting a hand on her shoulder. She considered moving her eyes to it but instead kept her gaze locked bravely onto his. "Of course you do. You like to learn new things. Here is one which I swear on everything holy, is not a lie."

He pulled at her shoulder to move her closer and whispered into her ear. "I was at the autumn festival last year as one of the Kazekage's bodyguards. There, I saw the Hokage make a toast to the great peace the continent hadn't seen in centuries."

Sakura's eyes went wide and her finger twitched. She kept silent.

"I saw a blonde girl called Ino walk around in a sultry red dress, and a man whose name I believe was Genma successfully eat a fruit salad with a toothpick in his mouth. There was also the Sannin Jiraiya, half-drunk and surrounded by women many years younger than him, a boy in a ponytail riding on his summoned deer, and a pink-haired girl and her blonde boyfriend making a tower out of pieces of sushi at an outdoor restaurant."

'_He isn't lying.' _

He looked away as though thinking about something. "And after I killed the boy with the deer, and cut out the blonde girl's eye…I went back with the Kazekage outside the village, and helped him launch some fireworks at the Hokage's tower. Deidara helped, too. It was a very fun time and the tower exploded with fantastic colors."

Sakura's eyes lit up with green fire. "You were the one who destroyed it?" He nodded with a little smile and tapped his fingers on her shoulder a few times. "Yes. I will assume you watched it burn down?"

"I was _in _it _while _it burned down. I was looking for Tsunade's most precious scrolls. I escaped with my left hand on fire, and three out of the sixteen scrolls."

The murderer took on a quick look of surprise, which turned to something close to genuine sorrow. "I apologize." His hand moved up and combed through her fine pink hair. "Had I known there was an innocent young girl inside, I would have opted for the grocery market instead. Surely that building would have been empty." The girl's brow lifted questioningly, masking her growing fury and horror. "Your jokes and insults are a little hard to understand, murderer. You'll have to belittle me in language a commoner like me can recognize."

Sakura's little half-joke, half-insult was belittling the fact that Sasori had risen much higher on the social chain since the Kazekage had appointed him as a personal bodyguard and commander of all his Suna shinobi. It was a little hard to understand.

He smiled again. "Fine. Here is one anyone will understand." Foolishly, he looked around to make sure no one was watching them. The puppets had apparently gone along with his game and had turned their heads away. Sasori pulled Sakura a smidge closer and whispered again in her ear. "I know you were present at the outdoor banquet where Tsunade was toasting to the festival-goers and the village leaders. I know you saw the kunai pierce into her back and you saw her drop her drinking glass."

All through his talk, Sakura's eyes went wider and wider and her hands trembled more and more. "Did you know…" He held her head in both his hands now. "Did you know, Sakura? I was the one who threw that kunai."

The shackles on Sakura's ankles shattered to nothing in a flash. The werewolf-puppet was tossed to the other side of the cell. Sasori had moved ten feet in less than a second; his back was now against the cell bars and Sakura's hands were around his neck. Her now-free feet were planted on the stone floor and her eyes flamed.

"You son of a bitch! She was my _mother!" _

Sasori's eyes widened. "Mother? Yes. That's why you called her by name before, yes? As opposed to Hokage-sama…" He stopped talking when Sakura's hands went tighter, crushing his neck. There was a tear forming in Sakura's eye, a drop of grief and sorrow showing itself in front of the livid rage. Sasori noted this and turned a look of sympathy on her. "I am truly sorry. I'm not lying. I did not know."

"As though that would have mattered!"

"If I'd known her daughter was watching, I would have struck her higher in the back of the head, so she would have felt no pain—" Sakura's hands went tighter and Sasori's feet moved some two or three inches above the ground. "My first kiss went to my mother's killer. That's…that's unbelievable." Again Sasori looked sympathetic. "Many women would be very pleased to have been in your position at that time—"

The young warrior laughed. "Oh, so you're a _conceited _killer, too! Holy god, my luck really does _suck, _doesn't it?_" _Sakura's famous strength showed itself. With one hand she tossed Sasori to the back wall. There was a bloodstain where the back of his head had struck the stone. He stayed there, half-sitting, half-laying against the wall, staring at Sakura with the sophisticated calmness that she knew from him.

"I'm going to enjoy finding you again. Even if Konoha doesn't win the war, we can have our own small victories before we die. Mine will be killing you. And I won't play mind games, either, Sasori. I will do the same thing my mother would have done to a person like you—I will _tear you to pieces._" And with one vicious punch, the cell bars were thrown off their hinges. Sakura used her equally famous speed, and dashed away, a free soul.

Sasori felt the back of his bleeding head and allowed himself a little smile.

666

Wow. I totally did not use the plot device I intended in the beginning. (I guess I'll just save it for Airborne…) And I can see a ton of things wrong with this…but I shall post anyway. Sasori's "suggestive" actions towards Sakura can be interpreted as either 1.) Him playing mind games with her or 2.) Truly being attracted to her and showing it. I personally go wiht the latter because I like the pairing, duh. Thank you for reading. I wish you all luck and happiness in the coming school/college year.

Ta…Storm


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